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strident
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  • Their strident quorks drifted down from above as Osha washed and cleaned and bandaged the maester's wounds, under Luwin's terse instruction.†   (source)
  • She put them into the basket and ran around the bend toward the harbor, where the morning sky was now bright with early sun and some of the boat engines were starting their strident din.†   (source)
  • His voice was rising to a horrible pitch of impassioned stridency.†   (source)
  • No. The teakettle whistled stridently.†   (source)
  • On her end, Mommy had no model for raising us other than the experience of her own Orthodox Jewish family, which despite the seeming flaws-an unbending nature, a stridency, a focus on money, a deep distrust of all outsiders, not to mention her father's tyranny-represented the best and worst of the immigrant mentality: hard work, no nonsense, quest for excellence, distrust of authority figures, and a deep belief in God and education.†   (source)
  • Words of long ago came back to me, a strident and smiling Lestat in that faraway, trouble-free place where the three of us had, quarreled together: 'A starving child is a frightful sight ....a starving vampire even worse.†   (source)
  • Clary opened her mouth to protest angrily, but was interrupted by a strident buzzing noise.†   (source)
  • As he spoke, Seth howled stridently outside the tent.†   (source)
  • Muted now, not strident, not announcing itself with a clarion, but waxing and waning in steady oscillations.†   (source)
  • In a very loud and strident voice the consulate official ordered Charles to sit.†   (source)
  • When he awoke from his nap, Florentino Ariza still remembered the shrieking of the cockatoo, whose strident calls belied his beauty.†   (source)
  • The argument was old by now, a tender knot in the flesh of their marriage, and even to her own ears her voice sounded strident, shrill, as if she were deliberately picking a fight.†   (source)
  • It is not as though I had expected an apology from her, but the stridency of this reply did, I must say, take me aback a little.†   (source)
  • American soldiers, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, leaned over bridges, entered bistros in strident, uneasy, smiling packs, circled displays of colored post cards, and picked up meretricious mementos, of a sacred character.†   (source)
  • Before the curtain rises, RUTH'S voice, a strident, dramatic church alto, cuts through the silence.†   (source)
  • Zayd's dad doesn't much like the pheasant hunting-and Bernadine, a strident gun control advocate, thoroughly hates it-but Zayd keeps it up anyway, pressing his father to go.†   (source)
  • Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter—like the throb of a heart made of jelly.†   (source)
  • She did not recognize her voice: it was strident, off key, too loud in her ears, the voice of a stranger.†   (source)
  • As the crisis in America grew worse, and the opposition in Parliament more strident, he saw clearly that he must play the part of the patriot-king.†   (source)
  • He heard a sound above the beeping traffic, something strident rising in the night.†   (source)
  • There were so many strident faceless people in uniform in the dining room with him.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Nightwing's strident voice cuts through the forest, moving toward us.†   (source)
  • By the time a strident electronic buzzer told us to go back inside, I had formed a semiclear picture of the group's emotions.†   (source)
  • On the television, a strident, cocksure voice told an interviewer, "We are embarked on the second American Revolution and you have my solemn vow that with a new Republican majority in Congress, American life is about to be profoundly different.†   (source)
  • Suddenly his voice was so strident that I looked up startled.†   (source)
  • The voice of the lecturer rose like the ringing of a cracked bell, his diatribe brief but strident.†   (source)
  • He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly-yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child's education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.†   (source)
  • I found plenty more to be angry about along the way and built something of a reputation for being strident.†   (source)
  • Uncle Lu was strident in his correctness.†   (source)
  • "My good friend Henry," he said stridently, the strangeness of that notion hanging there for us.†   (source)
  • His speech was strident but still smooth, and peppered with jokes.†   (source)
  • The rest were standing around in hatless, smoky little groups of twos and threes and fours inside the heated waiting room, talking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries.†   (source)
  • B. J., with her strident voice and her grating laugh, had been one of their mother's more irksome orphans.†   (source)
  • The friendliness that had existed before was gone; men and women struggled to be in the forefront, fighting their way with ferocity, thrusting forward with strident urgency.†   (source)
  • It was too strident, she thought, and perhaps a bit too angry.†   (source)
  • "You have no right to park your car on this street," she said in a harsh, strident whisper.†   (source)
  • My voice took on the strident tone of virtuous outrage which automatically arouses suspicion.†   (source)
  • "Bronek brought them last night straight from the cleaning unit," she continued in her strident singsong.†   (source)
  • BRADY (Red-faced, his larynx taut, roaring stridently) As they would look to the mountains whence cometh our strength.†   (source)
  • A babble of voices, someone swearing, and the strident, angry voice of Doris.†   (source)
  • Mary meanwhile rocked quietly backward and forward, and from side to side, groaning, quietly, from the depths of her body, not like a human creature but a fatally hurt animal; sounds low, almost crooned, not strident, but shapeless and orderless, the sisters, except in their quietude, to those transcendent, idiot, bellowing screams which deliver children.†   (source)
  • And now indeed the office was alive with hustle and bustle, annunciator bells, strident commands.†   (source)
  • His shoulders went stiff with surprise; Clary heard the bark of a familiar, stridently angry female voice, and a moment later Isabelle and Maryse Lightwood pushed past Luke and strode into the room, followed by the gray, menacing figure of the Inquisitor.   (source)
    stridently = loud and harsh
  • At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away.   (source)
    strident = unpleasantly forceful
  • The strident voices stopped abruptly.   (source)
  • The strident warble of Oromis's teakettle intruded, escalating in volume until Eragon's ears rang.†   (source)
  • Then Chris Hargensen said with loud, hysterical stridency: "She can't get away with it!†   (source)
  • Two more of the wraiths did likewise, and the forest echoed with the strident clamor of their cries.†   (source)
  • Throughout, Orrin was surly and remained stridently unconvinced of the existence of the Eldunari.†   (source)
  • The stridency was just below the surface.†   (source)
  • For she " did not have the time; she knew it and it drove her to the edges of stridency.†   (source)
  • Marie reached for his face, her voice now soft once more, the sudden stridency gone.†   (source)
  • 'You owe me money!' whispered the woman stridently.†   (source)
  • Suddenly, with controlled stridency, she added, "My superiors expect me to be in contact with them.†   (source)
  • But before Otto could close in on Mark, a new, strident sound entered the tent.†   (source)
  • The kettle began to whistle stridently.†   (source)
  • Startled, Alex Conklin snapped open his eyes, instantly shaking the sleep from his head as he clawed for the strident instrument on the bedside table.†   (source)
  • A loud, strident: "Why me?"†   (source)
  • Voices were coming from the library, the first one strident and immediately recognizable as their mother's: "What do you mean she's missing?"†   (source)
  • And with the never-ending, ever-strident nocturnal carnival, other games would begin, games the human race should have abandoned with the first light of creation.†   (source)
  • No one looked up when I sat down next to Mike, even though the chair squealed stridently against the linoleum as I dragged it back.†   (source)
  • It was not only that Republicans were divided from Federalists, but Federalists were sharply at odds with themselves, and the roll of the strident, often vicious press was changing the whole political atmosphere.†   (source)
  • Those two activities distracted him enough that, without thinking, he obeyed the strident command of his hunger and ate.†   (source)
  • In a funny way, she sounds like Liv Crawford when she reads from her books, a bit strident, overdramatic, with tones of succor.†   (source)
  • "No way!" he answers stridently.†   (source)
  • She was weakened from the blood loss, and I had the orderly wrap her in blankets and instructed Mrs. Matsui to give her an extra ration of porridge from her supplies and some dried fish broth as well, which she stridently protested but could do nothing about.†   (source)
  • He pricked up his ears and watched the blood drain from Aarfy's face as sirens mourned far away, police sirens, and then ascended almost instantaneously to a howling, strident, onrushing cacophony of overwhelming sound that seemed to crash into the room around them from every side.†   (source)
  • In media photographs and video he appeared to me as an ambitious minority politician and what being one had always meant-the adjutant interest groups, the unwavering agenda, the stridency, the righteousness.†   (source)
  • McWatt was too busy responding at the controls to Yossarian's strident instructions as Yossarian slipped the plane in on the bomb run and then whipped them all away violently around the ravenous pillars of exploding shells with curt, shrill, obscene commands to McWatt that were much like the anguished, entreating nightmare yelpings of Hungry Joe in the dark.†   (source)
  • The boys know it, too, they've learned this well, and they'll all wave goodbye with it, stridently, strong-armed, father-son, with the bombast of Americans, not yet knowing that this is the last language they will share.†   (source)
  • The man obviously expected his words to have no effect whatsoever on the tourist, so he compensated with exaggerated gestures and a strident voice.†   (source)
  • He started again, imposing a false control on his speech; but still it became strident, tight, involuntarily gathering speed.†   (source)
  • The strident hordes of merchants setting up their nightly tourist traps on the wharf paid no attention; it was merely one more jigi coming in from the catch.†   (source)
  • But the victory, if one could call it that, was ephemeral and elusive, a brief and strident shout atop a mountain that was more noise than substance, more smoke than flames.†   (source)
  • She yawned an exhausted yawn, no longer listening to Wanda's voice, or rather, no longer hearing the actual words, which had become strident, singsong, hectoring, inspirational.†   (source)
  • She gazed into the darkness of her wet cupped hands and heard the strident Tyrolean minnesingers from the salon far below, a cackling barnyard of voices propelled upward on a choir of thumping tubas, trombones, harmonicas in soggy syncopation.†   (source)
  • On Sundays, Charleston, without the dissonance of commerce or traffic, had the serene regularity of a city so magical in its harmony, so purified of stridency or disorder, so certain of its virtues, that it seemed a city separated from its century by an incorruptible cleanliness of spirit and image, a perfect environment for recreation and quiet pleasure.†   (source)
  • Sophie scarcely ever heard the music, indeed blanked most of it out, for it was never anything but noisy German backyard schmaltz, Tyrolean joke songs, yodelers, choirs of glockenspiels and accordions, all infused with recurring strains of treacly Trauer and lachrymal outpourings from Berlin cafés and music halls, notably such cries from the heart as "Nur nicht aus Liebe weinen," warbled by Hitler's favorite songbird Zarah Leander and played over and over again with merciless and monotonous obsession by the chatelaine of the manor—Hoss's garishly bejeweled and strident wife, Hedwig.†   (source)
  • The strident voice beside me was jarring on my ears.†   (source)
  • They were strident and blatant—and, in essence, lifelessly mild.†   (source)
  • Princess [in a low, strident whisper]: Sally?†   (source)
  • The triangle at the house rang stridently.†   (source)
  • From the back yard she heard Mammy's strident voice: "You, Priss!†   (source)
  • They shouted their orders rudely, nagging the swift jerkers glibly, stridently.†   (source)
  • No age can ever have been as stridently sex-conscious as our own; those innumerable books by men about women in the British Museum are a proof of it.†   (source)
  • Nails was in the second event against a man named Prince Jaworski, a drill-operator from the Brunswick plant who got all the encouragement of the crowd, especially as Nails shambled and covered from him or held him in clinches, looking frightened to death in the dry borax sparkle of the ring and gawping out into the ringside faces and the strident blood yells.†   (source)
  • The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and plaintive.†   (source)
  • The juicy epithets had long since lost their fine savor and a strident mechanical quality had crept into the rendering of the scene.†   (source)
  • With the result that for several days when twilight came-it fell much quicker at this time of the year-the streets were almost empty, and silent but for the long-drawn stridence of the wind.†   (source)
  • The butler ran to the top of the staircase and began to shout down it; a female voice, more strident than his, answered.†   (source)
  • Each sang stridently, with passion, with vehemence, as if to let the song burst out of it, no matter if it shattered the song of another bird with harsh discord.†   (source)
  • At night a smoky lamp burned dismally in the dark interiors, there was a smell of frying cookery and of unclean flesh, strident rasping shrews' cries, the drunken maniacal mountain drawl of men: a scream and a curse.†   (source)
  • Their squabbling, their stridence drowned memory; that tireless tossing of their bodies, their whirring gestures, jerky antics stitched a fluctuant, tough, ever-renewing veil between himself and terror.†   (source)
  • Then in a break of the wind they distinctly heard some strident yells and the discharge of a gun, followed by the roar of an angry crowd.†   (source)
  • Almost penniless again, with only the savage kaleidoscope of a thousand streets, a million lights, the blazing confusion and the strident noise of carnival, he returned to Newport News in search of employment, accompanied by another youth from Altamont, likewise a thriftless adventurer in war-work, whom he had found upon the beach.†   (source)
  • At the other table, round which sat a bevy of bright young people, the talk was incomprehensible, half drowned by the stridence of St. James Infirmary coming from a loud-speaker just above their heads.†   (source)
  • Her slipper patted longingly in time with old Levi's large splayed foot as he twanged a strident banjo and called the figures of the reel.†   (source)
  • "Cut out the joshin'," rang out Monty's strident voice.†   (source)
  • You can't save him now," replied Tull stridently.†   (source)
  • Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing.†   (source)
  • "Oh, I see," continued Mrs. Jett, without lowering her strident voice.†   (source)
  • "I found it on the miner Creede," replied the giant, stridently.†   (source)
  • Zilla was an active, strident, full-blown, high-bosomed blonde.†   (source)
  • "Swaller thet!" yelled Las Vegas, with terrible strident ferocity.†   (source)
  • "You never will," returned Longstreth, stridently.†   (source)
  • Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it.†   (source)
  • "Thet settles us, Snake Anson," stridently added Shady Jones.†   (source)
  • "HOLD HERE, MEN!" bawled Pilchuck, stridently.†   (source)
  • She stacked this deal," replied Pruitt's comrade, stridently.†   (source)
  • What 're you doin' heah?" he yelled, stridently.†   (source)
  • At the corner of the street, from a lower storey, rose a kind of humming with strident modulations.†   (source)
  • brava!" old Steyne's strident voice was heard roaring over all the rest.†   (source)
  • Emma began to laugh, a strident, piercing, continuous laugh; she had an attack of hysterics.†   (source)
  • She merely gave orders, brief, humorous, and introduced by a strident "Now don't be silly," and she expected that to settle the matter.†   (source)
  • There was no answer; judging that she was asleep they walked into a warm strident Paris night, snatching a vermouth and bitters in the shadow by Fouquet's bar.†   (source)
  • Pallid men rushed by, pinching together their coat-collars; a great swarm of tired, magpie girls from a department-store crowded along with shrieks of strident laughter, three to an umbrella; a squad of marching policemen passed, already miraculously protected by oilskin capes.†   (source)
  • of inactivity, inside the evil-smelling, squalid inn, Marguerite would have enjoyed the sweet scent of this autumnal night, and the distant melancholy rumble of the autumnal night, and the distant melancholy rumble of the waves; she would have revelled in the calm and stillness of this lonely spot, a calm, broken only at intervals by the strident and mournful cry of some distant gull, and by the creaking of the wheels, some way down the road: she would have loved the cool atmosphere, the peaceful immensity of Nature, in this lonely part of the coast: but her heart was too full of cruel foreboding, of a great ache and longing for a being who had become infinitely dear to her.†   (source)
  • The strident setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little Dabham of the "Riviera Notes," emphasized the ideals of a world where conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society column had become the roll of fame.†   (source)
  • Since coming to Lycurgus Roberta had not ventured to visit any of the rougher resorts near there, which were very much like this, only much more strident.†   (source)
  • It was a landscape of Bocklin's beside a landscape of Leader's, strident and ill-considered, but quivering into supernatural life.†   (source)
  • While passing Snap's cottage Hare heard a woman's voice in passionate protest and a man's in strident anger.†   (source)
  • There was a long pause, which the inner devils filled with strident laughter; then May freed herself from his arms and stood up.†   (source)
  • When the other sages of the Pullman smoking-compartment had left them to themselves, Babbitt's voice did not drop into the playful and otherwise offensive tone in which one addresses children but continued its overwhelming and monotonous rumble, and Ted tried to imitate it in his strident tenor: "Gee, dad, you certainly did show up that poor boot when he got flip about the League of Nations!"†   (source)
  • There are the rumble of trucks and the clump of trunks, the strident chatter of cranes, the first salt smell of the sea.†   (source)
  • See—Fay played here last—a house of stones an' sticks.... An' here's a corral of pebbles with leaves for hosses," said Lassiter, stridently, and pointed to the ground.†   (source)
  • In the bare dining-room of the inn, which he had hoped they would have to themselves, they found a strident party of innocent-looking young men and women—school-teachers on a holiday, the landlord told them—and Archer's heart sank at the idea of having to talk through their noise.†   (source)
  • The strident school-teachers were gathering up their possessions preparatory to a straggling flight to the wharf; across the beach lay the white steam-boat at the pier; and over the sunlit waters Boston loomed in a line of haze.†   (source)
  • On the back seat of the car Dick remained quiescent until the yellow monolith of Golfe Juan was passed, and then the constant carnival at Juan les Pins where the night was musical and strident in many languages.†   (source)
  • Are you goin' to keep your jaw shut?" he demanded, stridently, and a dark tide of blood surged up into his neck.†   (source)
  • Each stalk served as a perch for a grasshopper, which regaled the passers by through this Egyptian scene with its strident, monotonous note.†   (source)
  • At every backward and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound, which resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies; the setting sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be more charming than this caprice of chance which had made of a chain of Titans the swing of cherubim.†   (source)
  • The old man burst into a shout of strident and mournful laughter, coughing and laughing at the same time.†   (source)
  • We hear this strident and lilting refrain which we should say had been lighted up by a phosphorescent gleam, and which seems to have been flung into the forest by a will-o'—the-wisp playing the fife:— Miralabi suslababo Mirliton ribonribette Surlababi mirlababo Mirliton ribonribo.†   (source)
  • In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.†   (source)
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